Deadstarre
Expert
I got tired of re-rolling starts because they were too good or too bad. Starting with forested dye & marble compared to starting with silver and salt is basically the difference of an entire difficulty level or more. Forest chops were just dropped because someone said starting on a forest was the difference between keeping up with the AI or not through the renaissance, and they werent wrong, but in that same vein this matter is just as relevant.
I knew itd be a chore but I finally broke down and put the hours in of poring over every luxury, their possible starts (on forest or jungle), the manner/timing of their improvement upgrade (herbalist vs forge mines vs castle quarries vs camps that have forest), the timing of the building that improves them and their monopoly power. Then i re-worked the starting bonuses, the improvement bonuses, and the building bonuses.
Overall i'd say they got buffed but a couple things were normalized slightly. Mostly whats happened is the ones that were terrible or under-performing have been brought up to the level of power that some already had, so basically now none of them feel terrible to play with anymore.
first I had to make a list of what every resource currently did, here (missing sea resources)
then I re-did everything, doing my best to keep all factors plus original flavors and real life applications in mind, here (sea resources took into account lighthouse / harbor upgrade for building)
They are of course not perfectly balanced, but i see it as a huge improvement. I've been playing on this a bit already and i'm having a blast, luxuries are very limited so i think they should all feel powerful to have, not just some of them. The effects i'm seeing so far are:
1) lakes and similar good starting terrain isnt such an enormous game-changer anymore
2) sea starts look playable even for civs that arent sea specific
3) on any start I have the ability to build some early units and combat barbs a bit without needing to make enormous sacrifices to do it
4) hard to gauge this right now with golds value fluctuating week to week, but there is possibly too much gold at the moment. Im considering dropping 1g off trading posts to compensate, i think they could handle that loss easily
5) i'm losing badly on deity right now. possibly because some AI's arent being forced into playing through terrible starts anymore (things I would have re-rolled because I know itd be basically impossible at the difficulty I want to play) - now most starts are good enough to play
This isn't some attempt at a balance discussion by me, more a show & tell in the vein of photo journals really; i could have played through most of a game in the time it took me to accomplish all this heh. Not that looking at these giant lists of text could be nearly as fun as a photo journal... but if you ever felt something was off about some luxuries, maybe it interests you.
If anyone is wants to try out a game with the changes I made just let me know here or in PM or if you have thoughts about the current luxury situation in VP feel free to reference that original list above
I knew itd be a chore but I finally broke down and put the hours in of poring over every luxury, their possible starts (on forest or jungle), the manner/timing of their improvement upgrade (herbalist vs forge mines vs castle quarries vs camps that have forest), the timing of the building that improves them and their monopoly power. Then i re-worked the starting bonuses, the improvement bonuses, and the building bonuses.
Overall i'd say they got buffed but a couple things were normalized slightly. Mostly whats happened is the ones that were terrible or under-performing have been brought up to the level of power that some already had, so basically now none of them feel terrible to play with anymore.
first I had to make a list of what every resource currently did, here (missing sea resources)
Spoiler :
then I re-did everything, doing my best to keep all factors plus original flavors and real life applications in mind, here (sea resources took into account lighthouse / harbor upgrade for building)
Spoiler :
They are of course not perfectly balanced, but i see it as a huge improvement. I've been playing on this a bit already and i'm having a blast, luxuries are very limited so i think they should all feel powerful to have, not just some of them. The effects i'm seeing so far are:
1) lakes and similar good starting terrain isnt such an enormous game-changer anymore
2) sea starts look playable even for civs that arent sea specific
3) on any start I have the ability to build some early units and combat barbs a bit without needing to make enormous sacrifices to do it
4) hard to gauge this right now with golds value fluctuating week to week, but there is possibly too much gold at the moment. Im considering dropping 1g off trading posts to compensate, i think they could handle that loss easily
5) i'm losing badly on deity right now. possibly because some AI's arent being forced into playing through terrible starts anymore (things I would have re-rolled because I know itd be basically impossible at the difficulty I want to play) - now most starts are good enough to play
This isn't some attempt at a balance discussion by me, more a show & tell in the vein of photo journals really; i could have played through most of a game in the time it took me to accomplish all this heh. Not that looking at these giant lists of text could be nearly as fun as a photo journal... but if you ever felt something was off about some luxuries, maybe it interests you.
If anyone is wants to try out a game with the changes I made just let me know here or in PM or if you have thoughts about the current luxury situation in VP feel free to reference that original list above
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